Master Class: Rock the Vox!

There's a good reason why music-production illuminati dub
the lead vocal the “money track”: If it’s not fantastic, you
don’t have a record. To casual listeners, it hardly matters
how good the instrumental tracks sound. The lead vocal is
the thing that grabs their attention and impels them to listen
to a recording, or hit the Skip button.

In this article, I’ll detail the techniques that have
worked for me when recording lead vocal tracks over the
past 30 years. My focus will be on overdubbing vocals to
existing instrumental tracks, but much of what I’ll cover
applies equally to tracking a singer simultaneously with a
band. It all begins with common-sense tips.

Prepare Ahead of Time Nothing drains a singer’s mojo
faster than waiting forever while his mic is set up, a preamp
and compressor are patched into the signal path, a new
DAW track is created, and a headphone mix is devised
and routed to his cans. If possible, make sure all these
tasks are completed before the singer arrives at your studio. That way, you can immediately get down
to making magic together after a couple minutes
of ice-breaking chitchat.

I’ll talk in-depth about equipment selection
and setup shortly, but a few words about mic
choice bear discussion now, before your session
begins. If you’ll be working with a singer
for the first time, ask her well before the session
what her favorite mic is for recording;
that is, one that has yielded flattering results
on her other sessions. Try using the same mic
model if you own it. If it’s not in your arsenal
and you can’t justify renting it, choose another
mic from your collection that has a similar
frequency response, polar pattern, and bass proximity
effect.

An alternative tack is to set up a few of your
best vocal mics before the session and have
the vocalist briefly sing into each one so you
can hear which is the best match for her voice.
The drawback to this approach is it takes time,
something that the project’s budget might not
allow. Fortunately, there is a simple way to
choose the perfect mic on the spot. But first, a
little feng shui is in order.

Pamper the Talent Physical discomfort or
an impractical setup will derail a singer faster
than any other performer on a session, so baby
the songbird. Offer her a warm glass of water
so her pipes won’t dry out midway through
the session. Set up a music stand on which to
place her lyric sheets, if any, and let her decide
where to position it; a squinting, craning singer
isn’t going to give you a commanding performance.
Ask her how she’d like you to adjust
the room’s lighting: dim for vibe, or bright for
more energy and easy viewing of lyrics. And
while you’re practicing your bedside manner,
borrow the lyric sheets and make a copy of
each for yourself so you can follow the bouncing
ball while tracking.

Fig. 1. The frequency-response charts for the Lawson L251 multipattern tube microphone show the increased bass response attendant with progressively higher directionality. (These plots were derived at 18 inches from the mic; close placement would show much higher bass-proximity effects for the directional patterns.) The lower curve in the bass band for each chart is the response of the mic with a bass roll-off filter activated on the mic’s outboard power supply unit.

Choose the Right Mic If there’s no time for
auditioning mics with the singer, don’t fret. Assuming
you intimately know the strengths and
weaknesses of each of the mics in your collection,
you can usually tell which one will sound best
simply by having the talent sing a few lines a cappella
sans microphone. If singing a cappella makes
the singer self-conscious, listening to him talk will
often help you divine the most appropriate mic.

Choose a mic that de-emphasizes any overly
pronounced frequency bands and bolsters
weak bands in the singer’s voice. For example,
you wouldn’t want to use a mic that has a
hyped top end on a very sibilant singer; that
would only make sibilance sound worse. If the
singer’s timbre is very thin or shrill, consider
using a multipattern condenser that will let
you dial in the perfect amount of bass-boosting
proximity effect to balance his tone. (See
Figure 1, as well as “Using Polar Patterns
To Shape Tone”.)

A singer who projects loudly should be paired
with a mic citing a high maximum-SPL spec to
avoid distortion. Conversely, a very weak singer
needs a mic boasting both high sensitivity and
very low noise; otherwise, your track will be
infected with noticeable preamp hiss (especially
after compressing it during mixdown). If you
suspect your chanteuse has poor mic technique
and might sway off -axis while performing, pair
her with an omni or wide-cardioid mic that will
capture her voice despite her wandering. (One
caveat: If your studio’s room tone sounds terrible,
use a more directional mic and be prepared to
either compress the vocal track heavily or automate
its fader during mixdown.)

Get in the habit of listening to vocalists sing
a cappella. With practice, you’ll soon be picking
the best mic for singers within seconds of
them opening their mouths.

Hang it High If you’re using a side-address
mic, hang it upside down to get it out of the
way of a music stand and give the singer a clear
sight line to the lyric sheets. Then ask the singer
to stand for a moment within kissing distance
of the mic’s diaphragm. Instruct him to hold
his head the way he will when he sings—for
example, he might look slightly downward at
lyric sheets positioned on a stand—and adjust
the mic’s height and angle so that his lips are
pointed directly at the diaphragm.

Next, tell the singer how far away from the
mic you’d like for him to stand. Base your preference
on the timbre of his voice, the mic’s polar
pattern, and the vocal effect you’re shooting for.
For instance, if his voice is fairly deep and you’re
using a cardioid mic to weed out room tone, try
having him stand five to 12 inches away from the
mic; that will reduce the bass-proximity effect that
would otherwise make his track sound boomy or
blurry. Conversely, when using an omni mic on a
rock singer with a perfectly balanced tone, you’ll
get a very urgent and focused sound if his lips are
practically touching the mic.

Consider all the setup you’ve done so far to
be just your starting point. After listening to
the singer over your control-room monitors,
you may need to make some subtle adjustments.
For instance, a persistently bassy
sound may impel you to open up the mic’s
polar pattern (say, from cardioid to omni) or
point the mic at the singer’s nose instead of
his lips (that is, farther away from any chest
resonance). Conversely, you might need to
position the mic below a shrill female singer’s
mouth to capture more chest resonance. If she
is extremely sibilant, try rotating your directional
mic so that it is aiming to the left or
right of her mouth; such off -axis positioning
(of a directional mic) will gently roll off very
high frequencies and soften any offending
whistling (see Figure 2).

However you set up your mic, remember to
place a nylon wind screen between it and the
singer. This will quell any plosives that might
otherwise audibly pop the mic’s diaphragm. It
will also prevent your condenser mic’s frequency
response from degrading prematurely. (See
“Charging Ahead”.)

Patch in a Preamp and Compressor
When selecting your trinity of mic, preamp,
and compressor for recording vocals, a good
rule of thumb is to choose a solid-state design
for at least one of those items. Too many tube
stages can result in an overly velvety tone that
lacks definition. You can always add more tube
harmonics at mixdown—running your track
out to analog gear or using a high-quality tube emulation
plug-in—but you can’t get rid of an
excess amount after it’s been recorded.

Fig. 2. The cardioid polar plot for the Lawson L251 multipattern tube microphone shows the pattern’s typical rejection of very high frequencies arriving off-axis to the front of the mic.

Another pitfall to watch out for is oversaturating
the mic preamp, causing unwanted
distortion. Begin the singer’s soundcheck with
the compressor (placed downstream from the
preamp) set to 1:1 ratio and unity I/O gain levels.
Heavy gain reduction at the get-go might
fool you into thinking your preamp gain is too
weak, when in fact it’s too high and the compressor
is merely neutralizing it. Downstream
compression won’t stop distortion caused by
over-the-top preamp gain.

Once your preamp’s gain is set, dial in a moderate
ratio (roughly between 2:1 and 5:1) on your
compressor, using a soft-knee mode. (If you’re
using an opto-electronic compressor, simply
raise the peak-reduction control to increase compression
depth as desired.) As a starting point, set
the threshold so that the quietest vocal phrases
don’t trigger any gain reduction. Peaks should
not sound squashed. If the singer is highly dynamic,
you may need to chain two compressors
in series—each performing moderate gain reduction—
in order to handle the most explosive vocal
peaks transparently.

For a VCA-based compressor that uses an
RMS detection circuit, good attack and release
times for recording lead vocals are typically
10–30 ms and 100–500 ms, respectively. (Most
opto compressors have inherent time constants
that can’t be adjusted.) Faster attack and release
times can produce really urgent-sounding vocal
effects, and for this reason some engineers prefer
using lightning-fast FET compressors when
recording vocals. Be careful, though: A radically
shaped compression curve will be virtually
impossible to correct at mixdown. I generally
prefer to use a light touch when recording to
capture vocals cleanly; I try my most adventurous
processing at mixdown, when it’s possible
to undo overly zealous experiments.

Because most amateur and semi-pro singers
hold back a little during soundcheck, you
should initially set your compressor’s output
gain for a –10 to –6dBFS reading on the meter
for your A/D converter or I/O box. If you were
to set your initial levels higher than –6 dBFS,
the singer might push levels into the red later
when he cuts loose (especially if you’re compressing
very lightly).

The singer’s soundcheck should ideally be
his first run through the song (versus setting
levels a cappella). No matter how lame your
initial ballpark settings might be for your
mic pre and compressor, record everything.
Magic often happens only once, and sometimes
it’s during the singer’s warm-up. During
the first take, fine-tune your preamp gain
and compressor settings as you listen and
watch your meters.

Once all of your gear is dialed in, refer to
your copy of the song’s lyrics to set markers
on-the-fly for verses, choruses, bridges, and
coda during the next take. Being able to jump
to each song section with the click of your
mouse will speed the session along and help
keep everyone’s creative juices flowing.

Tweak the Cue Mix The singer’s headphone
(cue) mix—which you set up prior
to the session—should be independent of
the mix playing through your control-room
monitors. You may need to hear her live vocals
or a specific instrument at a different
volume than what she needs to hear in order
to give her best performance. Try to set up
an inspiring mix in her cue feed, with the
following provisos: Emphasize the kick and
snare tracks a bit so she can readily lock her
phrasing to the song’s tempo, and mute any
gliss-happy tracks (such as fiddle and pedal
steel guitar) that might throw her pitch off.
If she’s still pitchy, or if her vocal phrasing
sounds too loose, reduce the amount of
reverb in her cans. A singer whose pitch is
consistently sharp probably needs her headphone
level lowered.

After all these adjustments, if the singer’s pitch
or phrasing is still too loose, try stripping her cue
mix down to just her vocal and a basic rhythm section:
drums, bass, keys, and one guitar. Reducing
clutter in her cans will help her accuracy.

Fix Now or Comp Later If you’re pulling
double-duty as producer on the vocal session,
you’ll need to choose how to best approach
the recording process. Some producers
prefer to record a few continuous passes
of the entire song, pick the best take and
then fix the clams by punching in. I much
prefer to record a lot of passes in shorter
segments and composite-edit them into one
super-take after the singer leaves; that strategy
gives me more material and time to raise
the money track to its fullest potential. If the
singer is amenable, I like to work section by
section through the song, recording phrases
at the top of their range last so I don’t blow
out their voice before we’re finished.

When the session is over, be sure to
make detailed notes about the signal chain
you used—the specific mic, preamp, and
compressor you chose and their control
settings—so you can recreate it the next
time you record the same singer. Keep your
notes in a readily accessible file. It might be
months or years later, but when the singer
returns to your studio, you’ll have his golden
signal chain ready to rock.

Using Polar Patterns To Shape Tone

Multipattern microphones offer various tonal responses depending on the polar pattern
selected. This is due in part to a bass-proximity effect inherent in mics producing
directional patterns: The closer you get to a multipattern mic set to a directional
mode, the more pronounced the mic’s reproduction of bass frequencies.

The omnidirectional, or omni, pattern doesn’t exhibit any bass-proximity effect
and usually offers the flattest and smoothest response. No matter how close you
stand to an omni mic, its bass-frequency response will remain consistent.

A mic’s bass-proximity effect increases as its polar pattern becomes more directional
(see Figure 1). Placed at a consistent distance from its source, a mic’s hypercardioid
mode will produce more bass than its cardioid mode. The mic’s bidirectional
(a.k.a. figure-eight) mode, if available, will produce the most pronounced bass proximity
effect. Knowing this, you can dial in the perfect amount of bottom end for a
singer’s track without using EQ. Have the singer stand at a consistent distance from
your multipattern mic—initially set to omni mode—and then shift through increasingly
more directional patterns until the low end sounds just right.

Charging Ahead

A condenser mic’s electrically
charged head capsule attracts fine
dust particles floating in the air. When
water vapor or fine droplets of spit
from a singer’s mouth combine with
this dust on the mic’s diaphragm, it
forms a cement-like film that prevents
the diaphragm from vibrating
freely. Repeated deposits progressively
degrade the mic’s frequency
response over time.

Using a windscreen (pop filter) will
protect your mic’s diaphragm from
dewy minstrels. A nylon pop filter
sounds more acoustically transparent
than a fitted foam windscreen,
which stifles high frequencies. If
possible, power down and store your
condenser mics in a closed box after
each session to protect them from
dust and humidity.